So going back to Playstation, outside of your experience as a developer, what were the things that you as a player really admired about the games that came out for the platform?
I have always been most impressed with the first-party games that have been released. I think when you look at last year’s releases in particular, games like Uncharted 2, that one really stands out. Games like LittleBigPlanet, which came out the year before.
Those are two that we still play in my house pretty frequently. And all the other first–party games, they are consistently top quality. And that is something that is unique about the Playstation versus the other consoles. When I say top quality, I’m not just talking about visuals, I’m talking about audio, I’m talking about game design, I’m talking about story, I’m talking about in LittleBigPlanet’s case, their approach to user-generated content. I think that–and again, I’m biased because we’ve been developing for the Sony platform for so long–but I think that Playstation first-party titles break a lot of new ground.
Can you give examples of that?
I’ll use LittleBigPlanet again. I don’t think any console game has done as much to support user-generated content as LittleBigPlanet has. Before it came out, many of us at Insomniac were scratching our heads about how one could possibly create a toolset that would be easily accessible by any gamer and how one would control content that is created in one’s home and then uploaded to the Internet. But Media Molecule figured out how to do it, and as a result, LittleBigPlanet is one of those games that you can play forever because there’s new content appearing all the time. Everyday, there are new levels being put up, new things to experiment with. It’s amazing.
And you’re saying that’s not just an investment on Media Molecule’s part, it’s also an investment on Sony’s part. They’re saying, “OK, we’re going to support this.”
Yeah. Because there’s a lot of infrastructure that has to be put in place to support that kind of content. I mean, those levels exist somewhere, they’re existing on Sony’s servers, and again, there’s a lot of behind-the-scenes work that has to be done to make sure that when you do upload something you have a good experience. That you’re not seeing content that’s inappropriate. I mean, the list goes on. So it was not a small challenge at all. But these guys managed to tackle it and succeed.